His voice, with its suggestion of suavity, fell soothingly on her nerves.  She had never liked him so much, and she had never shown it so plainly.  Once as she met his genial gaze she held her breath at the marvel that he should grow to love her, and in vain.  Was it that beside his splendid shallows the more luminous depths of Nicholas’s nature still showed supreme?  Or was it a question of fate—­and of first and last?  Had Dudley come upon her in the red sunset, in the little shanty beside the road, would she have gone out to him in the mere leaping of youth and womanhood?  Was it the moment, after all, and not the man?  Or was it something more unerring still—­more profound—­the prophetic call of individual to individual, despite the specious pleading of the race?  But she put the thought aside and returned casually to Dudley.

His heartiness was a tonic, and her vanity responded to the unaffected admiration in his eyes; but his chief claim to her regard lay in the fact that it was the general, and not herself, whom he endeavoured to propitiate.

“Well, my dear General!” he exclaimed cordially as he threw himself upon the worn horsehair sofa in what was called the “sitting-room,” “I find your story about the fighting Texans capped by one Major Mason was telling me last night about the North Carolinians—­” He got no farther.

“I’ve fought side by side with North Carolina regiments, and I tell you, sir, they’re the best fighters God ever made!” cried the general.  “Did you ever hear that story about ’em when I was wounded?”

Dudley shook his head and leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees and an expression of flattering absorption on his face.

“I can’t recall it now, sir,” he delightfully lied.

The general cleared his throat, laid his pipe aside, and drew up his chair.

“It was in my last battle,” he began.  “You know I got that ball in my shoulder and was laid up when Lee surrendered—­well, sir, I was propped up there close by a company of those raw-boned mountaineers from North Carolina, and they stood as still as the pine wood behind ’em, while their colonel swore at ’em like mad.

“‘Damn you for a troop of babies!’ he yelled.  ‘Ain’t you goin’ into the fight?  Can’t you lick a blamed Yankee?’ And, bless your soul! those scraggy fellows stood stock still and sung out: 

“‘We ain’t mad!’

“Well, sir, they’d no sooner yelled that back than a bullet whizzed along and took off one of their own men, and, on my oath, the bullet hadn’t ceased singing in my ears before that company charged the enemy to a man—­and whipped ’em, too, sir—­whipped ’em clean off the field!”

He paused, clapped his knee, and roared.

“That’s your North Carolinian,” he said.  “He’s a God Almighty fighter, but you’ve got to make him mad first.”

Miss Chris brought her knitting to the lamp, and Eugenia, sitting with her hands in her lap, followed the conversation with abstracted interest.